Friday, March 27, 2009

Fedor, Pizza Doodles and Story Outlines Potpourri

I've got a killer idea for a show about Fedor.These are the kinds of scribbles I do while waiting for Eddie to meet me at our favorite pizza place.Mindless doodles.Can you believe anyone takes this guy seriously? Like HE's normal?

Man, Bugs is hard to draw!

Hey! Do you wanna see how we write our cartoons? They are totally artist friendly - as opposed to scripts - which are intended to make cartoonists commit suicide - or murder.Here's the beginning of a story about a comic book geek going to the store on the day they deliver the new issues, something probably most of us can identify with.

I thought of posting this because the other day I tried to read a Godawful modern script based on some wacky classics. It had every single writer's sin:

CARTOON WRITER SINS

Written way too long.Crowds upon crowds: scenes taking place in sports stadiums, impossible stuff to draw.Long long episodes of boring meaningless dialogue.Everybody out of character. Too many characters. Characters that don't work together.Too much action detail described by people who can't draw, therefore can't visualize.Boring prose.Pop culture references.Explaining the "jokes".

Cartoon scripts are torture to read. You can't do it in one pass. It causes narcolepsy.

I believe in writing outlines - just enough material to get across the story and plot. Then you give that to a storyboard artist to flesh out with the director and other gag men.

Over the years I've developed this system. Computers have helped make it easy for us to combine the drawings of the key moments with the loose written descriptions of the most important events. The result is like a rough children's book.

If you'd like, I'll post the whole story in this form as a preview of the episode in progress.The drawings in the outline are by me and Jim.

I nearly wet myself reading "He has a magic paunch"... Maybe that is Fedor's secret. Or the insane training, creepy lack of emotions, and ability to get dropped on his head by Kevin Randleman and then collect himself and win anyways. Good stuff.

Fedor's face is temperamentally similar to Roman portrait sculpture. They're stoic without much expression, but captivating, and mysterious nevertheless. A link to a portrait of Marcus Aurelius, the founder of Stoicism. Hope it works.

This just seems so logical when it comes to writing out cartoons. I can't stand non-stop dialogue.

Agreed that this would be most efficient for comics too. When I read a comic I want to see the drawings telling the story, not a panel filled up with words. Not a static image 6 times in a row with a stretched-out soliloquy. Post more, John!!!

I'd like to know how you got the ideas for the outline. Did you have a brainstorm session? Or were those ideas you had by yourself earlier or events that actually happened in your life? Do you use some kind of story structure for your stories, like the three act structure?

I like to know all this, because I just finished the story and storyboard of a cartoon, and I like to know if we approached it the right way, when we 'wrote' the story and the gags, so I can develop and get better at it. Next week we'll start animating, so that will be fun too!

There is a portrait of Mr Fitzgerald up there! I love George's expressions.

I want to see how you write cartoons!

I'm tired of pop culture references in cartoons. The creators watch too much entertainment news. They need to stop regurgitating the worn out Hollywood fantasy world stuff found in movies and gossip rags and discover something new found beyond their pop culture prison. Fedor could beat them sensible and even help them see stars.

There looks like there is a vanishing point at the beginning of the word ratchet in the Comic Book Day pic. I've been curious how linear perspective is used in the developmental process of a cartoon.

yes please, more outlines. It's an interesting way to write a story. I'm currently finishing up a scriptwriting course taught by someone who's never drawn, and it's evident. I believe there is much more potential for giving characters life by writing this way, and not hiring someone who doesn't consider "writing sins".

I personally don't consider pop culture references to big a sin. When done right, they can really be fun. The problem with them today is that too often they're used as a crutch. Instead of writing a good joke, some writers will merely stick in a reference to something most often from the 1970's or 1980's and hope people will say "hey, I remember that show".Heck, there was a time when making references made a show look clever. SCTV is credited for doing great things with pop culture references (although their main objective was to satirize the television industry so those references were entirely necessary). But, these days, thanks to shows like Family Guy and any immitators who abuse this sort of thing, more and more people are seeing references as the opposite of clever and that's a crying shame.

Everything else in this post is spot on, Mr. K. I've never seen a full Dr. Phil show in my life and I hope I never do.

Hey John I know you say that you usually don't use construction for many of the doodles because you are trying to get ideas out, but some of the bugs bunny drawings you have here appear (to me at least) to have construction. Were they made using construction? If not, your really good at drawing straight ahead and making them look constructed!

please post some more examples of that script outline- I saved both of those images for references myself, as I am never going to look back on any other way of explaining a script other than that ever again. so simple, and never used.

There is a major difference between popculture references and parody. Today's cartoons are just references. They just expect the audience to know what they are talking about do little to actually make fun of what the subject is.

Sorry to triple post but another sin is being so self referential. The Venture Brothers is doing it way too much now. They constantly point out story cliche after cliche instead of coming up with original humor.

Please post more of the stories. Thats one of the biggest reasons I have been reading your blog since day one. I love the stories you come up with. and the process is so interesting. That drawing of george under the car getting perturbed is hilarious.

Another thing is bad ideas are universal. For example, I work at Wal-Mart and I will hear the same bad jokes EVERY SINGLE DAY from all sorts of people. Like if the item dosen't scan they'll say "It's Free", or if I just open my register I'll hear "You must have been waiting for me !".

Family Guy plagiarizes itself so frequently that it makes me cringe in disgust on a regular basis. Its such a lazy lazy show. Seth McFarlane must be an awful person. I hope he chokes to death on a stack of 50 dollar bills.

On another note, I am really interested in what Fedor's magic punch does. Does it cure cancer or help locate kids who ran away from home? Does he need to eat radio active vegetables from Chernobyl to refill his punch power? Does he have to fight caviar smugglers and Russian mobsters led by his brother, unbeknown to him?

this is great stuff, John! I love this kind of process, I don't get to do it this way on production the production that I'm on...but when i get home to work on my own toons, this just makes the most sense.

Anyway, i think i landed back here at just the right time! I wanna start storyboarding/writing something up for a small labour of love project and these writing tips are really useful thanks!

Also good to see i'm not the only one always struggling with bugs!

Have you seen the behind the scenes of Iron Giant? Brad bird was like 'hey my influences are looney toons and i hope that feeling of rawness came through in this movie' Errr is it me or did Iron Giant use like NO principles and all the movement and anticipations were pretty stock. Also what's your take on animating eyes and blinks? Have you covered this?